Is it climate change or is it just weather?
Written on July 11, 2012 by Beyond Seasons End 1 Comment »
Add to favorites
Texas drought, August 2011 Graphic, University of Houston
Climatologists caution against asserting any single weather event is the result of a warming planet, but a report published by the American Meteorological Society July, 2012 tackles the challenge of explaining the extreme weather events of 2011 from a climate perspective. Proposing that reports assessing the causes of historical changes in temperature and precipitation worldwide be issued annually, the authors suggested definitions of terms such as “extreme” and described methodologies to use in such analyses.
The report examined six extreme weather events to study if and how they exhibited a relationship between natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change. The authors concluded that climate change did not exacerbate all of the events – flooding in Thailand, for instance, was not the result of extraordinary rainfall but rather of land-use changes – but that in general the extreme events are consistent with scientists’ predictions of how the Earth will respond to a warming climate.
You have observed very interesting details! ps nice website.